Diabetes and obesity-related illnesses are rife in the modern world. What we eat and how much we eat seem to be culprits. Recent research suggests that specifically, too much fructose is a significant problem for the human digestive system. An article from The Economist titled How too much fructose may cause liver damage discusses research in the journal Cell Metabolism.  

The article states:

“Specifically, Dr Rabinowitz’s work suggests that fructose, when consumed in large enough quantities, overwhelms the mechanism in the small intestine that has evolved to handle it. This enables it to get into the bloodstream along with other digested molecules and travel to the liver, where some of it is converted into fat. And that is a process which has the potential to cause long-term damage.” 

It seems that small amounts of fructose are digested safely. Too much fructose consumption is a problem. If you look around you, you’ll see A LOT of food sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup. Think that might be a problem?

You may also know that fructose is the primary sugar in fruit. So is fruit dangerous? The article doesn’t discuss fruit but I have a couple of thoughts on any potential harm posed by fructose from fruit:

First, my bet is the amount of fructose one would get while eating fruit is far less than one would get while drinking soda or eating processed food sweetened with fructose. Who among us would sit and gorge on fruit? Ever eaten more than one apple or orange? Doesn’t happen very often. (I’d like to meet the person who managed to become unhealthy by eating too much fruit.)

Second, the fiber in the fruit slows the digestion and thus probably slows the release of fructose. That results in less fructose to deal with per unit of time. That dynamic should help make fructose digestion tolerable. In contrast, most fructose-sweetened foods have little to no fiber, (soda and fruit juice are liquids) and thus creates a big turbo-shot of fructose which is something with which the human digestive system doesn’t have much experience. To that point…

Humans haven’t had access to refined sugar until recently in our long history on earth. Fruit is seasonal. It doesn’t sit around for long. In our past, we had to compete with all the other animals in the forest and the jungle to eat the stuff. Either that or it would fall off the tree and rot. Honey, as you know, is guarded by little stinging monsters which makes acquiring that source of sugar a bit costly.

The candy business started in the early 20th century. A hundred years may sound like a long time but in terms of evolution and the human digestive system, it’s an incredibly short amount of time. So our digestive system—a system refined over millennia of natural selection—has suddenly been deluged by sugar. We’re unequipped to deal with this recent development, so we see the problems described above.